Originally published at: This analyst predicted the January 6 Trump coup riot | Boing Boing
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Which has already resulted in more deaths from more variants, with only the occasional beating up of a customer service rep just doing their job.
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What I find more impressive is all the people who didn’t think this was an obvious and inevitable outcome. His rallies encouraged violence from the jump and at no time did he show any respect for any institution or norm. He outright said more than once that he wouldn’t respect the outcome if he lost and has spent four decades using lackeys as cannon fodder and throwing them under the bus.
ETA: Relevant (especially Joe’s facepalm):
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I hope national treasure Anthony Fauci has a VERY good bodyguard team, because he does seem to be the prime lightning rod right now (and all of that impotent frustration is looking for an outlet).
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Fauci and the virus/vaccine denial, 1 million deaths notwithstanding, pales in comparison to the coming coup. Trump and his Krakens are setting up all the 9-D chess pieces for the next round of their election caper.
All that has to happen is for corrupt state legislatures to send Trump delegates in swing states when Trump in fact loses those states. (This is legal.) The “most” legal (and most upfront about their corruption) would be for legislatures, prior to the election, to legislate their intention to nominate electors independent of any vote: but that would give their game away. The “least” legal would be if they only sent them after a Trump loss, overriding the popular vote.
VP Harris will be in no-win situation: she either certifies Trump’s jerry-rigged win or she refuses to accept those delegates, and the election swings to the House (Trumps original plan in 2020), where Trump wins that way, too. It’s all perfectly “legal” and “constitutional”; the Kraken SCOTUS will “sadly” have “no choice” but to deny any appeals. [EDIT: And what if Harris refuses to do either, and effectively “filibusters”: a true constitutional crisis. Thanks, Putin.]
We’re in a dark timeline. My only question is: what is Trump going to do in 2028 (should he live)? Will he and his minions attempt a unambiguously unconstitutional third term?
uh, but what happens if the only electors submitted to Electoral College are the false ones. Congress can reject those, ok, but then there are 0 votes for that state(?)
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Fauci and his family get regular death threats now. There was recently a very high profile one where someone used the phrase “kill shot” in discussing Fauci. It’s really disgusting to see that.
No. they’re really not. They’re not doing anything particularly brilliant, they just have people who understand how our electoral system works and are willing to subvert the weak points with loyalists coupled with real threats of violence. It’s not really that “smart”… The nazis weren’t particularly brilliant strategists, they just were able to exploit weak points in the Weimar system… Same with Italy. Franco just did it the old fashioned way with a civil war.
We’re all agreed there.
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We all knew they were going to be there and they would try something if Pence didn’t do trumps bidding. That was why it was so absurd that a trump official (maybe meadows, not sure offhand) refused to put on extra police and issued a memo saying no riot gear under any circumstances.
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Clicked expecting to read it was Bill Maher.
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I think most of us who were paying attention predicted something like this.
Oh, c’mon. That was totally metaphorical! /s
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We are fortunate that Trump is as incompetent as a coup leader as he was as a president.
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I don’t think we should assume this shit is over. They are very much trying again, in public, by taking over the election apparatus of swing states.
I’ve said this like a million times - a coup isn’t a byproduct of some extremely intelligent operatives. It’s a willingness to subvert the law (which Trump has actually be very successful at for decades now) and the willingness to use force if necessary. They have shown they can and will do both to get what they want, which helps explain why the far right religious groups back Trump, because they’ve wanted to take over the country for several decades now, because they believe that they are under attack from the rest of us.
We have to get out of the mindset that Trump and his ilk will fail because he’s “stupid”… that’s not how reality works. Force and just ignoring the rule of law is the way in which this stuff goes down.
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And they could very much accomplish it.
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Trump’s friends and foes alike keep making the mistake of assuming there’s a method to his madness, that his ability to create havoc is evidence of some kind of strategy. That is absolutely not the case. Trump isn’t a brilliant strategist; he isn’t even a stupid strategist. He’s a profoundly dangerous idiot.
Trump didn’t even plan the last riot (which is not to say that he does not bear full responsibility for it). His plan for January 6—insomuch as he could be said to have had a plan at all—was to overturn the election through a series of procedural maneuvers that virtually everyone in the administration outside of Trump himself knew had no chance of succeeding whatsoever.
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And yet he very nearly did, except for the actions of a few people. And he’s very much doing the work to ensure he “wins” in 2024, even if he loses.
So, no he’s not some brilliant strategist, but that is not what makes an authoritarian take over, which is my point that everyone seems to keep ignoring… It’s a combination of luck, the right amount of support in the population, people willing to go beyond the law, both in terms of subverting the law and the use of violence. The nazis did not rise to power on their intellectual brilliance, but on having some popular support, for being useful tools by the conservatives/ monarchists, and being willing to subvert the law and use force when necessary.
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I’m more worried about how they are trying to exploit the failings of the electoral college (which came way to close to working last time) than him using force. Fortunately, he is not very good at sucking up to the generals, and that is probably a perquisite for him to use force.
If you’re not scared of this, you’re not paying enough attention.
At a fundamental level, he doesn’t believe in laws per se. He believe in lawyers and directing them to do “abuse of process.” where make frivolous claims and obfuscate and delay until he wears his opponents down.
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I’m concerned about both. Let’s not forget how the conservatives used the Brown shirts to “deal with” the Communists in the late 20s and early 30s in Germany, thinking they could be controlled. The Proud Boys and various militia groups are very similar to that and they have already been fighting “antifa” and BLM. It was just too obvious to embrace groups like the Hammer Skins who have been around since the 90s, as they want to maintain some distance from outright Nazis, I’d imagine. It doesn’t need to be a professional military force to get the job done.
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I was expecting it to be just about everybody, because anyone could have seen that coming
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